Heady stoppers?

Stowe board puts off Alchemist discussion despite eager crowd

Like a Heady Topper beer cracked open on a hot day, the air was audibly let out of the room Tuesday at the Stowe Development Review Board meeting.

That was the atmosphere after the board postponed a highly anticipated decision on whether to permit the Alchemist Brewery to build a second location in the Mountain Road Village District.

The crowd of roughly 30 people who attended the meeting was highly disappointed.

“I flew back from Detroit to be here for this,” said one man, who later refused to give his name. “I think part of the reason some of us wanted to be here was to see how you as a group thought through the process.”

According to board chair Brian Leven, the board did not have suitable numbers to discuss the topic adequately. Only five of the seven board members attended Tuesday’s hearing, and Leven is likely to recuse himself from the discussion, since he is friends with the applicants, Alchemist owners John and Jen Kimmich.

A project has to have at least four votes in order to be approved by the Development Review Board. Jen Kimmich said over the phone Wednesday that in Leven’s absence, the board would only have four members discussing a project that already has significant sums of money wrapped up in it. She said although Leven is a personal friend, he has not had any sway in the project.

“Why don’t you just take the input from everybody?” asked Chuck Ebel, vice-chair of Stowe’s planning commission, who attended the meeting as a resident.

Per meeting rules, the board could have opened up the meeting and taken testimony from the public, and then tabled the topic until its June 17 meeting. But Leven said he would “prefer not to” take testimony Tuesday, instead inviting the public to submit written comments. Ebel said that was a “pretty closed-minded approach.”

Mixed response

The Alchemist announced last month that it planned to open a second, larger brewery on Cottage Club Road in Stowe, on land owned by the Stoweflake Resort and Spa. It would include a retail outlet and visitor’s center.

The news has had people in the community and across the state chattering for the past month. The Alchemist’s existing brewery is in Waterbury, but its retail shop closed to the public last year.

But some residents are worried about seeing throngs of beer fans flock to Stowe. Part of the reason the Alchemist is seeking a new space is because Waterbury residents complained about the traffic at its cannery there, where legions of beer lovers came every week to buy cases of its immensely popular flagship brew, Heady Topper.

Stowe zoning director Rich Baker said after the meeting he thinks traffic is one of the largest concerns of Stowe residents, too.

The new brewery would be located on Cottage Club Road. But some people in the audience Tuesday clearly opposed having the Alchemist at that location, including Tom Meehan, who owns property there.

Meehan was not displeased that the board pushed back its hearing.

“How many times can this be put off? Because I’d be in favor of putting it off indefinitely,” he said, to some chuckles.

When approached in the somewhat boisterous lobby after the truncated hearing, Meehan said, “I love their beer. I just don’t want it in my backyard.”

But some people came to the meeting as Alchemist cheerleaders. Andre Blaise, a member of the Stowe Conservation Commission, said the brewery puts out “potentially the world’s greatest beer,” and the Kimmichs are known for their dedication to the community.

“It’d be an honor and a privilege to have it in Stowe,” Blaise said. “I look forward to seeing it come full circle.”